Great.

Pushing a hand through her straight blond hair, Tory started to unpack. She didn't really hate her new tropical wardrobe. Deep inside she knew that. But she was feeling frustrated and oddly depressed. As she hung her sundresses in the closet in the stateroom she'd been assigned, she forced herself to remember that she was on a luxurious cruise ship, about to sail into the Caribbean for ten sun-filled days. There were about a million worse places to be, and not many better.

Back in New York, for example, it was snowing. People were wearing gloves, scarves and hats and tucking their faces into their turned-up collars as they trudged to work. They could see their breath in the air, for Pete's sake.

And she was about to explore sunny, exotic St. Bart's and Grenada and the Bahamas. What was wrong with her?

She didn't have to go far to unearth the source of her downer: her father. At twenty-nine, she should have been used to his unenthusiastic reactions to her good news. It was his way, that was all.

He rarely lavished praise on anything or anyone, and his only daughter was no exception. All her life he'd greeted her successes with a nod of acknowledgment and little more. When she'd been accepted into the prestigious Cuisine Institute of America to do her chef's training, she'd expected champagne corks and back pats from him. She'd been followi